Rebirth
by dreadwing346
Summary: Naruto is tired being ignored neglected from his family from the village he prays to any deity to hear his call. But the one deity heard the cries of a sparkling that deity was Primus who grants Naruto his wish to give him a new life and a purpose to live with a new name in Life Begins Naruto's or should I say, Orion Pax's Journey
1. Chapter 1

It was a dark and stormy night and the only sound that was heard over Konohagakure was thunder and lightning. Everyone was snug in their bed and n sound was heard throughout the village. However, one, in particular, was not in bed nor was he anywhere nears the feelings of safety and love. His name was Naruto Namikaze, and he, like always was alone and crying in a cave near the Hokage monument trying to get out of the rain, but also to heal what's left of his heart. You see, Naruto was the son of Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki, but they never pay attention to him along with the rest of the village, all in favor of his two sisters, Naruko and Narumi Namikaze, the containers of the yin and yang of the mighty Kyuubi no Kitsune. Praised as heroes to the village all have seemed to be fine, however as the two girls got praised, Naruto was forgotten by everyone.

"Why is it always like this?" the 4-year-old had sobbed into his knees. "Why am I the one to be forgotten while those two are praised? IT'S NOT FAIR DAMMIT!" Naruto had cried while he punched his small fist into the wall of the cave. Lightning flashed and thunder roared throughout the sky when he had shouted. Naruto the raised his head and looked at the sky as another bolt of lightning flashed throughout the sky, he prayed to any deity out there to hear his call take him away from, this awful Place gives him a new life where he is needed and loved to prove that he exists.

 **"Indeed, it is not fair little one I have seen what your parents and this Village have done to you I will grant you an opportunity to have a new life a fresh start but if you accept this you'll no longer remember who you once were with a fresh start new life and a new named do you accept."**

the mystery voice said is Naruto thought for a moment a new life for him is waiting for him, all he must do this to accept but before he accepts he needs to leave a final message to his so-called family. "I accept but first let me leave it a message to my family," he spoke the last words with Venom and disdain. **"very well youngling do not take long meet, me back here on top of the Hokage monument until midnight."**

Before the voice could disappear, Naruto asked, "what is your name." the voice was silent for a moment until it responded, **"my name is Primus little one."** As the Voice spoke and disappeared as Naruto ran all the way back home, and climb through his window so his family doesn't know that he was out in the chilly rain. Once inside his room he found a piece of paper and a pencil and started writing what he felt about his family, **"Dear Namikaze family, I know now how all four of you feel about me, and I'm sorry for dragging you down and being weak but even if you want me to stay I know you had already disowned me by taking away my Birthrights. So, you'll be happy to hear I won't ever bother you again and you could enjoy your life with your favorite children's. From Naruto. "**

Once Naruto finishes writing this letter headed to come up with a plan to distract his parents long enough to escape the village and their grip, he remembered watching his father help his sisters create Shadow Clones and he memorized to hand signs so performing The Shadow Clone Jutsu he created one solid clone. Naruto gives the clone it ordered to distract his parents long enough for him to make his escape with the help of the mysterious voice. The clone nodded taking one of Naruto's old shirt and ran off to the Village Gate to throw off the scent of the original.

With that done, Naruto made his way to the Hokage Monument as his clone ran out of the Village and was heading to the direction of iwa making the Hokage believe that Naruto was kidnapped then running away. As Naruto made to the top of the Hokage Monument and called out to "Primus! Where are you!?" Naruto yelled. He got no answer "Primus!" He yelled again. that's when he felt a presence right behind him he turns around only to see a ball of light, **"Hello little one it seems that you have arrived now let's get going."**

Naruto nodded feeling determined and excited for his new, life Primus could feel the boy's eagerness and smiled even though Naruto couldn't see it. **"Alright Naruto place your hand on me and I'll transport, you to a New World so you'll start a new life."** without hesitation, Naruto place his hand on Primus than a blinding light cover the village and they're were gone, it wasn't long until the Namikaze family awoken after the light was on but it was already too late Naruto was gone forever.


	2. Chapter 2

On Cybertron it wasn't long until Primus did deliver Naruto wish, he was granted a new life a new name his name is Orion Pax, who's the student of Alpha Trion we'll find our young hero in the Hall of Records. The Hall of Records in Iacon was closed to the public. In the archive stacks, at a workstation where he had been installed following the tradition and practice of his caste, sat a monitor named Orion Pax who once was Naruto Uzumaki – Namikaze and sitting next to him was a little turbo Fox with three tails more than a normal turbo Fox. He was tapped into the Communications Grid that invisibly spanned all of Cybertron, monitoring and recording every communication that passed through the Grid. Those that met certain criteria, he listened to, annotated, categorized, and saved in a different sector of the DataNet.

Like much of the rest of the great city of Iacon, the Hall was constructed of a golden-hued alloy that lent itself to the curving architectural style that predominated elsewhere in the city. The architects of Iacon had favored towering, monumental buildings topped by conical structures that looked as if they might take off. The entire city was a monument to aspirations… only there were no aspirations among Cybertronians anymore. They were born into a caste, a place that they would maintain for their entire lives. The civilization of Cybertron existed in a perfect stasis. It had been that way for millennia. Iacon was in some ways a memorial of a Cybertronian culture that had not existed in the memory banks of any existing Cybertronian.

Inside the Hall of Records, another kind of stasis existed. The history of Cybertron, from the mythical ages of battles among the Thirteen Primes across the billions of cycles, to the latest transmissions on the latest bands Orion Pax was charged with monitoring—all of it was here. All of it was categorized, cataloged, stored, indexed, and cross-indexed. After that, save for when the High Council or another authority got interested in a threat to civic order, the ever-growing collections in the Hall of Records were ignored.

At once point Orion Pax understood from reading the older records—Cybertronian civilization had maintained links with other planets that surrounded other stars. At once point Orion Pax understood from reading the older records—Cybertronian civilization had maintained links with other planets that surrounded other stars. At one point Ryan felt something similar to be in a knot in a different world but he shook it off as he watches the Via a network of Space Bridges constructed with technology long abandoned, populations of Cybertronians on far-flung planets had stayed in contact with Cybertron. Gigantion, Velocitron, even the Hub, all were once part of a greater Cybertronian culture. Now the Space Bridges were all long since collapsed and degraded. The last of them, which hung in the skies between the two moons and the Asteroid Belt, had not been used since a long, long time ago. Even Orion Pax, who could ordinarily dig anything out of the records of Teletraan-1 and the DataNet, was not sure exactly how long it had been.

Now a Cybertronian like Orion Pax would not go to the stars. He would not fight nobly for the great ideals of the Primes. A Cybertronian like Orion Pax would monitor, assess, and catalog transmissions on the Grid because that is what Cybertronians of his caste did. Other castes built and engineered, governed, made laws… or fought in the gladiatorial pits. But deep down Orion was having a feeling to be out there to fight nobly for the great ideals and make a name for himself, but couldn't yet anyway he needed to be patient for the right moment to strike.

From all this Orion did find something, oddly enough, came some of the more interesting transmissions Orion Pax had heard lately. He was not a great follower of the arena, but even he knew of the most recent champion Megatronus. Quite a bold action, to assume that name—it was not just any bot who could carry the weight of one of the Thirteen Primes, whose deeds still echoed across the megacycles of history. This Megatronus had not lost a match since the early days of his career in the arena. The gladiators began with no names, and most of them ended that way as well; Megatronus had claimed not just a name, but a name that could not help but capture the attention of even those castes who pretended to pay no attention to such degraded entertainments as gladiatorial combat.

 **meanwhile at Konohagakure**

 **Uzumaki/Namikaze Compound**

 **Dream**

Kushina is far from the woman she used to be. The loving woman that Konoha knew is now just a brick wall. It all started that day, the day she lost her baby boy on that night how she lost her to the kidnappers waking up Kushina could only frown as she had an uneasy feeling coming from the pits of her stomach. It was as if she just lost something or someone important and it saddened her for some reason. Looking around the room Kusnina noticed how she wasn't in her son's room but is a dark room with steel doors with chains around them and what seem to be blood over on the top memories this terrified Kushina because she didn't know what's going on. That's when she heard faint crying down the hall, she had a sinking feeling as she remembered that she realized she had neglected her own son for years was too painful for Kushina but she still needed to find out where this the sound of crying coming from as she continued walking down the dark halls having a Feeling a sense of foreboding Kushina ran down the Halls.

only to stop midway down the of the dark hallway as she gasped in shock when she saw Naruto with his back facing her sobbing into his arm.

"S-Son?" she gasped out hoping that what she was seeing wasn't just some sort of illusion. The young child stopped his crying and slowly turned to face his mother. Kushina took a few steps towards her supposedly kidnapped son and was about to hug him until she saw Naruto's full form.

Kushina's eyes widened in horror. Naruto seemed to have gone through a shredder. The 4-year-old body was a bruised mess. It was as if someone continued to beat him while not trying to even heal his injuries. That wasn't it. His body was covered with scratches and whip marks that seemed to bleed liters of blood each. What was the worst in Kushina's opinion was how half Naruto face mutilated and unrecognizable to make it even worse what was left of his right eye was yanked it out of the socket. Blood fell freely from the wound which almost made Kushina throw up by just looking at it. But that wasn't the worst part of it.

The worst part was Naruto was smiling at her! He was smiling as if those injuries were supposed to be there.

"Why?" was all the injured child said which caused Kushina to jump I fright.

"W-W-Why w-what?" stuttered Kushina who had tears at the edges of her eyes.

"Why didn't you protect me Why did you stop loving me?" Naruto asked his happiness disappearing and his voice trembling.

Tears freely fell down Kushina's face as she stared down her injured son's body while trying it think of how to answer him. True she should be worried about his health but something told her that she wouldn't get anywhere by worrying about it.

"I-I-I-..." Naruto didn't let her finish as he asked more questions.

"Where were you when I was Taken!"

"I-I w-w-..."

"Why didn't you train me like you trained Naruko and Narumi?" At this point Naruto was crying tears from his only eye.

"W-We...K-Kyuubi...T-Train..." she tried to reason with him but couldn't stop herself from feeling she was trying out make excuses.

"Why didn't you treat me like a son?" That question did it for Kushina. She collapsed on her knees and sobbed into her hands.

"I don't know! I don't know why i didn't treat you like a son! I'm a horrible mother so p-please l-let me h-help y-you. L-Let b-be y-your mother one l-last t-time" sobbed Kushina reaching her hand out to Naruto's own. To her horror she only grabbed nothing Naruto's small body started to disappear into the light "It's too late now. You had your chance and you lost it. Goodbye...mom. I wished you tried at least" after finishing what he wanted to say Naruto turned around and started to walk away that's when Kushina notices Naruto's small body started to disappear into the light "It's too late now. You had your chance and you lost it. Goodbye...mom. I wished you tried at least" after finishing what he wanted to say Naruto turned around and started to walk away Naruto's small body started to disappear into the light "It's too late now. You had your chance and you lost it. Goodbye...mom. I wished you tried at least" after finishing what he wanted to say Naruto turned around and started to walk away that's when Kushina notices Naruto's appearance started to change from a little boy to a full-grown man as he disappeared into the wind. Kushina just looked at the where Naruto once stood with wide eyes.

It didn't take long for Kushina to collapse into a sobbing mess.

"NARUTO IM SORRY! PLEASE COME BACK. COME BACK MY BABY BOY!" screamed Kushina out to the heavens asking why they would take her boy away.

 **End of dream**

After that dream Kushina Uzumaki has seen better days, she's been in a depressed state, never leaving Naruto's old room, her since silky red hair has dulled, her eyes once filled life were now lifeless. She still ate and bathed but other than that never did anything else. But she has a feeling that her son's out there alive she just needed to find a way to bring him home but how that's when a knock at the front door and no one else was home with Naruko and Narumi at the academy and Minato back on active duty. So she got up and walked down stairs, when she opened the door she saw her friend Mikoto staring at her.

"Hello Kushina, may I come in," asked Mikoto, as Kushina moved so she could get in. They both walked over to the couch they both sat down, with Mikoto sitting across from Kushina who was staring at the floor.

"Kushina I know it's hard for you Kushina but you have to stop moping around like this it's not going to help you or help fine Naruto." Hearing dose worlds leave Mikoto mouth she felt like someone stabbed her and twisted the knife.

"You had the power to be a good mother to Naruto but didn't, now instead of taking responsibility you're sitting up in his room not doing anything." After saying that Mikoto then slapped Kushina when she started crying.

"No, you don't get to cry anymore, Kushina, I have never seen Naruto cry not once but here you are, so you're going to stop with the pity party, because if this keeps up our friendship will be over. " Mikoto, having said her piece, got up and left leaving Kushina alone with her thoughts she had a lot to think about. That's when she remembered some of her old cleanse grows that she hasn't even touched it probably they could help her find her son, she got up her eyes full of determination to find him no matter what she ran to the family Library to the archive section and began her research.

 **back on Cybertron**

The sight of two—or more—Cybertronians tearing each other apart was something that few would admit enjoying. Yet the pits in the lower levels of Kaon were one of Cybertron's most popular tourist destinations, and the Grid was alive with broadcasts and rebroadcasts of the various tournaments that were constantly going on. The only industry in Kaon that could rival gladiatorial entertainment was recovery and reconstruction. The mechasurgical engineers of that city—and its gladiatorial rival, Slaughter City—were without peer. Arena combat was illegal across Cybertron, but the High Council in its wisdom understood that a population confined by caste needed certain outlets. So the pits in Kaon, which had begun long ago as a diversion for the workers in the great foundries there, were now entrenched, even if technically outside the law of Cybertron. In Slaughter City it was much the same.

So it was odd that from Kaon and Slaughter City, Orion Pax should be hearing and seeing arguments he could only call philosophical. And they were coming from the greatest of the illicit champions of Kaon's pits: this Megatronus.

The transmissions were fragmentary and distorted, originating as they did from deep inside the metallic bowels of Kaon. Between those lower levels and the Grid receptors, they picked up enormous interference from the industrial processes that drove Kaon… and, Orion Pax knew, the civilization of Cybertron. Nothing could be created without the raw materials first being refined. That happened in Kaon and the Badlands that stretched between it and the Hydrax Plateau. As long as those Badlands fueled the needs of Cybertron, the High Council would keep turning a blind optic to the gladiator pits.

Orion Pax sigh and wondered how long that would continue. He listened to the most recent of Megatronus's transmissions, fingers hovering over the interface that would determine where he cataloged it.


	3. Chapter 3

Orion POV

"Are Cybertronians not all made of the same materials? My alloys are the same as those in the frame of a High Councilor; my lubricants are the same as those that lubricated the joints of the Thirteen themselves!" Megatronus's voice scraped and rasped like one of the great machines in the factories of Kaon. I looked up and down the row of other Cybertronians of the same caste as I continue petting the little turbo Fox. As I spend my careers monitoring and cataloging, feeding the vast databases of Iacon. This was the way the civilization of Cybertron had been since long before the creation of myself. And yet they were made of the same materials as the Archivist Alpha Trion, or any member of the High Council.

Would a Councilor spend his life monitoring transmissions?

"We are individuals! Once we were free!" Megatronus's voice scraped through my head. What would my fellow monitors think if they could hear?

They would report this Megatronus in a nanoklik. That's what they would do, I thought. As if in reply, Megatronus said, "The High Council, if they heard me now, would quietly render me into slag. Do not doubt it. They may be listening now. If I vanish, carry on my work. Soundwave, you and Shockwave will carry on. You are my trusted lieutenants."

A second voice came in. "Lieutenants? Are you now the general of an army, Megatronus?"

This caught My interest as I listened harder. I ran a check on the new voice—it was neither Shockwave nor Soundwave. I had heard them before, and had records and database entries for each.

But this new voice was not in the index I maintained to keep track of Megatronus's associates. Who was it?

It was not part of my job to investigate. I monitored, observed, recorded. Investigators were of another caste.

I must, report to Alpha Trion, the overseer. I had sampled the new voice and spent a few cycles compiling a report. It wouldn't do to present myself to Alpha Trion without a good reason, and proof of how good the reason was.

The Archivist of Iacon, Alpha Trion, was far older than myself, who had heard stories that he had existed since the great age of the Space Bridge-fueled expansion, the high point of Cybertronian civilization. What that must have been like, to be able to ride the dimensional bridges to other stars…

"Orion Pax," Alpha Trion said. "What brings you here to interrupt my work?"

"I seek advice." I activated the recording of Megatronus. Alpha Trion put down the antiquated stylus he used to make entries in the single book that sat on his desk. The Archivist of Iacon had databases and endless hard-copy records of virtually everything that had ever happened in the history of Cybertron, yet he chose stylus and book as his interface. Like many of the older Cybertronians I knew, Alpha Trion had grown eccentric.

When the recording had played out of a wall-mounted speaker and Alpha Trion had taken his standard moment to tap his stylus on the desk and think over various potential responses, the Archivist said, "Megatronus."

"Why has he named himself after a mythical being?" I asked.

"If the old stories are true, Megatronus believed until the end that he would be vindicated," Alpha Trion said. "He believed himself to be doing what was right even if his methods destroyed much of what he professed to believe."

"Not much of an example if you're plotting a revolution," I said.

With a dry chuckle, Alpha Trion stood. "Indeed not. But perhaps that is not the only example to be taken from the deeds of Megatronus. Who is this upstart?"

"He has been a gladiator in Kaon. Like all of them, he began without a name, a worker who took to the arena as a way to glory. He has never lost, and his fame has grown to the point that few other gladiators will fight him one-on-one. Now it seems that he is no longer content to be the greatest gladiator in Kaon; he has grander ambitions."

"Ambition," Alpha Trion echoed. "That is not a quality encouraged on Cybertron. As you know." He fell silent, and I thought he had detected something of a wistful tone in the Archivist's voice.

He waited, and after several cycles Alpha Trion spoke again. "Go back to your post, Orion Pax. Continue to listen. When you know what this Megatronus is planning, return to me and we will consult further."

Alpha Trion POV

After young Orion Pax had left me alone in the depths of the Hall of Records, I considered the situation. Unusual in one so young, he thought, to have such a sense of what has gone past, what may never return. But that was to be expected when Orion Pax spent all of his time in the Hall listening.

The High Council would have to hear of this gladiator calling himself Megatronus. But it was not clear to me and what is the best way was to present the situation.

"Covenant," I said softly. "What may we know of this Megatronus?"

The Covenant of Primus lay open on my desk. I had created it in the aftermath of the War of the Primes. In the Covenant lay the entire history of the Cybertronians and the beings that gave them life, all the way back to Unicron and Primus. And the Covenant also contained the future—although that part of the Covenant remained mutable. I could see certain things that would happen because they became real as they appeared in the Covenant, but I could not always know whether what I saw would come to pass. The burden of knowing the future was myself, and myself alone, but it was lessened because even what I knew of the future could change at any moment. And I had some power over it as well. The Quill, that instrument young Orion Pax failed to understand, was one of the surviving artifacts of the Thirteen, and was one of the most powerful objects in the known universe.

Using it, I could inscribe the future into the Covenant. This was a dangerous power to exercise, and there was never any guarantee that an alteration to the future would last. The Covenant itself had the final word. It was a book of pure destiny.

I flipped forward a few pages. One of the peculiarities of the Covenant was that the reader— who existed in a moment in time—had a difficult time understanding the book's language on its pages dealing with the future. Even myself could read those pages only seldom. The further into the future the Covenant went, the more obscure and difficult the language became. Its first pages were written in languages that no Cybertronian had spoken in thousands of stellar cycles. On its last pages were words in languages that no Cybertronian had ever yet spoken.

I had written it all, even the portions written in languages that did not yet exist. Orion Pax did not know that. Nor did any of my other underlings in the Hall of Records. None of them would have believed it if they had been told.

And not even the most credulous of the race of Cybertronians would have taken seriously the assertion that I was one of the Original Thirteen—the only one, I believed, remaining on Cybertron. He had seen the history of Cybertron from its creation. I had seen allegiances form and shatter among the Primes.

I had observed firsthand the murder that had destroyed the Thirteen, sending them out into the vastness of the universe. With the Covenant, I had stayed behind—to record, to observe, to exert what influence he could without giving away the truth of his identity. Most Cybertronians no longer believed in the Primes, or else considered them semihistorical myths. That was fine with me. It was no longer an age for mythic personalities.

Or, perhaps, it was an age for new ones.

I wondered what it would be like to understand the Covenant in its entirety. To assimilate all of the knowledge, the consciousness of past and future collapsing together in my mind…

It was the doom of the Archivist to wrestle with what I would never understand.

Hearing the name Megatronus had put me in a frame of thought that could almost have been called nostalgic. The days of the War of the Primes were still alive in my memory; the Golden Age that had followed, as Cybertronians had ridden the Space Bridges to the stars, was one of the great historical periods in the history of the known universe. The magnificence of it, now passed, could only be harkened back to. I remembered the gradual rise of the caste system. I had spent much time talking to Sentinel Prime about the direction Cybertronian civilization was going. In the end, they disagreed. Sentinel Prime defined himself by actions and thought only about near-term goals and results. I had no need to define myself. I was one of the Thirteen, whether any sentient being knew it or not. And I thought about more distant horizons of consequence.

After their last argument, Sentinel Prime had dismissed me to the Hall of Records. "Disappear into the stacks and let the dust cover you, Alpha Trion. Cybertron has no need of you anymore." Those had been Sentinel Prime's last words.

"Megatronus," I whispered. Now another had arisen among the anonymous masses of downtrodden laborers claiming the name of Megatronus. This was in the Covenant as well. I had not thought to see it happen in exactly this way, but since it was in the Covenant's pages, it was bound to happen. This Megatronus, this gladiator and factory worker with grandiose ambitions—how much did he even know about the Prime from whom he had chosen to borrow his name?

I forced myself back into the present. I began to search in recent records for any evidence of unrest in Kaon. It didn't take long before I was immersed in a story the likes of which I had not expected to find in the regimented cities of Cybertron.

I looked up and opened a Grid link between my desk and Orion Pax's. "Please return," I said.


	4. Chapter 4

Orion POV

I stood at the opposite Alpha Trion waiting for the Archivist to finish writing in the large book open on his desk. Setting down his stylus, Alpha Trion looked up at me. "Megatronus didn't begin right away planning a revolution," he said. "Not on a planet-wide scale, in any case. He began by taking over the gangs who run the gladiator pits in Kaon and Slaughter City."

"Criminals," I said as he started to speak, then stopped again as he realized that he had been about to say that he thought this kind of criminality was inevitable in a caste-bound society.

Alpha Trion looked at me expectantly, then went on. "Before he had a name—or took a name—he was a champion gladiator. He had some success. That meant others of his caste looked to him for his strength. He became a leader without meaning to."

Images and video flashed across a holodisplay over Alpha Trion's desk. The images were of destroyed Cybertronians, each one labeled with a name. Indexing them quickly, I discovered that each victim had been involved in running the gladiator pits, and most of them had other criminal enterprises as well. In the video, Megatronus—this was the first time I had seen him—stood over the sparking and twitching body of one of the low-level crime bosses I had already seen in a still image. "It begins here," he said directly to the camera. Behind him a number of other gladiators raised their right arms, standing silently. "You who take your pleasure from our suffering, and turn our work into your leisure… you have forgotten what it is to be Cybertronian. Once this was the greatest planet in the galaxy. Now we have fallen. But we rise again, because there are yet Cybertronians who can envision the restoration of our former glory. I have never had a name, but now I take the name Megatronus, naming myself for the greatest of the Thirteen, the One who refused to bow before any of the others. Only by knowing how far we have fallen will we understand what it is to rise again. Cybertron!"

"Cybertron!" roared the other gladiators in unison.

The video cut out.

"You had not seen this?" Alpha Trion prompted me, I shook my head. "Ah. This is the fruit of discouraging ambition. We train generations of Cybertronians who do not imagine what might be done."

I was, unsure what to say, I remained silent. Alpha Trion smiled at me. "Never fear, Pax. I tell you simple truth. This is no game designed to entangle you in words you do not understand. All I say is that we live in a certain world. Few of us imagine what it might be like to live in another. But some of us… some of us remember what other worlds were like once. And some of us are foolish enough to wish that we might live in such a world again."

There was a pause in the room, broken only by the whisper of Alpha Trion's stylus on the pages of the book. "What are you writing?" I asked at last. "I am writing what I have learned," Alpha Trion said. "As time passes, we will all discover together whether I have understood correctly. But now you must return to your post. Think about what I have said." "I will," I promised.

And I did, all the way through the mazy corridors of the Hall of Records back to my station on the eighteenth floor, third from the northwest comer, where when the winds blew out of the north the cold made the lights of Iacon twinkle in the distance. I enjoyed being close to a window. Many of his colleagues were not.

Some of us are foolish enough to wish that we might live in such a world again…

What had Alpha Trion meant? I turned the Archivist's words over in my mind, and could reach no conclusion. No comfortable conclusion, in any event. The only way Alpha Trion's words made sense was as an encouragement to think—was this even safe to think in one's own mind? —to think beyond caste.

To remember that Cybertron had not always been so rigidly divided.

To imagine that a future might exist in which Cybertron was restored to its former greatness.

I listened, and cataloged, and archived, and indexed, but his mind was not on my work. The noises of the Grid were incomprehensible to me now that Alpha Trion had opened my mind to a possibility beyond Cybertron as it was.

Who was this Megatronus, this gladiator thug, killer of criminals and criminal himself, who gave voice to a longing that I had never known he felt?

 **Meanwhile at Konohagakure Uzumaki/Namikaze Compound library**

Kushina has been hard at work trying to find a way to bring back her lost son Naruto back home into her arms but it's more difficult than it looks, it took her nearly four weeks just to find a proper tracking seal that was buried within in the Uzumaki library inside her own home that she neglected to look over the years as she skins through the sealing technique she realized it was a difficult seal it will take her many years just to finish it. But it will be worth it just to find her baby boy back into her arms where he belongs but she unaware that Naruto wasn't they baby anymore or even Naruto anymore but his is Orion now with a bright future ahead of him thanks to a certain God on his side and his furry companion.

As Kushina worked every day ignoring her two daughters her husband that they grew more worried about her then Naruto being gone they worried for her sanity and her house because she hasn't been eating sleeping all she's been doing is trying her best to finish the seal tracker and find her missing baby boy. Kushina wasn't the only who was effected with Naruto disappearances Minato was also affected his been trying drown in his paper work to keep his mind off his missing son.

 **hokage tower**

Minato Namikaze is in his office trying to do his paperwork but couldn't. He sighed in frustration as he sat back and rubbed his head, thinking about a certain someone.

His son Naruto.

He looked at the picture on his desk which showed all of his family with smiles on their faces, except for Naruto, who had a sad look on his face as he stared at them. A sad and regretful look appeared on the Fourth's face as he remembered all the terrible things he and Kushina did and said to Naruto before he ran away or kidnap and especially disowning him.

"Naruto..." Minato thought as he started to remember the day he and Kushina found out about Naruto's disappearance.

 ***Flashback***

After Naruto disappeared

It's been a few days since Naruto had disappeared after stormy night. Minato and the rest of the family never noticed or didn't really care.

Hiruzen was worried. He hadn't seen his surrogate grandson in two weeks. Sure Naruto is distant from his family it wasn't that bad right. UN the less Hiruzen decided to check on him, but he was in a rude awakening when he finds out the Naruto disappeared, after Hiruzen found the letter that Naruto left for his so called family. He quickly told Jounin that Naruto ran away, shocking them, and to hurry and find him. The Jounin left and Hiruzen prayed that Naruto was still okay.

Tsume and her daughter Hana used her hounds to follow Naruto's scent that one lead to the Hokage Monument and the other lead to Village Gate they slid-up but only to come up empty as the scent died at the placed where he disappeared. The hounds began to whimper as they smelled something else and whatever it was scared them. Tsume noted that whatever the scent was it started to disappear as well. She wouldn't admit but the mysterious got her shivering a little in fear.

But the Jounin knew one thing.

Whatever that scent was, it had Naruto.

Hiruzen was truly heart broken by the news. None more so than Little Hinata who deeply cared for Naruto as she overheard the conversation, as she went to see if Naruto was with him. After hearing the news, she fainted on the ground.

The moment she woke up, she broke down into tears and hugged Hiruzen, crying out Naruto's name. After she calmed down, she went out told the people who really cared for Naruto and they were shock, sadness, and anger. Shock that Naruto ran away, sadness that someone took him, and anger to the Namikaze family.

Speaking of them...

Hiruzen would always see the Namikaze family together with bright smiles on their faces. Anger would appear on his face as he glared at Minato and Kushina. Not only did Minato and Kushina for not caring Naruto as their son, both of them and his students were still training with his former sisters not noticing Naruto was gone! HOW THE HELL COULD THEY EVEN SMILE LIKE THAT WITH NARUTO GONE!?

Enough was enough.

So, on the day when the girls went to their friend's house for a day date he marched right to the Estate with a scowl on his face. He walked up to the front door and knocked on it repeatedly. The door opened, showing it was Kushina Uzumaki.

"Old Man?" Kushina asked in a surpried tone. "What are you doing here?"

"Hello Kushina." Hiruzen said, in an emotionless voice, surprising and confusing her more. "May I come in?"

"Um...sure?" Kushina moved out of the way and let the former Hokage enter. She closed the door behind them and walked into the living room. "So what brings you-"

"Call Minato, Kushina." Hiruzen interrupted her. "There's something I need to talk about with you two."

Kushina raised an eyebrow but just nodded her head. She sent Chakra into her wedding ring and in a flash, Minato appeared right next to her. He was about to ask what was wrong but noticed thst Hiruzen was there with an emotionless expression

"Lord Hiruzen?" Minato asked. "What are you doing here?"

Hiruzen ignored the question. "Minato. Kushina. Tell me, where is Naruto?" He saw the two parents blinked at the question.

"Naruto?" Kushina said for a moment and thought when was the last time she saw Naruto, "he should be in his room." Said a confused Kushina not remembering where her son has been.

"If that is true bring him down here I would love to see him." Ask Hiruzen already knowing his answer. "Okay I'll go get him and bring him down?" asked Kushina, noticing Naruto wasn't at break-fist this morning, she thought as she made her way to Naruto's room but stopped at the door, Minato and Hiruzen right behind her only to see Kushina standing at the door.

"Kushina what's the matter?" Minato asked wondering why his wife didn't go in.

"I've never been in Naruto's room what if he gets mad." Said Kushina, but she pushes that aside and opens the door. When they looked inside they were shocked at how empty it looked, while Naruko and Narumi rooms were decorated Naruto's room was Spartan only decorations being a few this thing that his closes friends give to him and his paintings, 'Did Naruto paint these.' Thought Minato, grabbing one of a shining metal, technological world; a planet of towering future cities without end and vast metallic plains, spiraling metal mountains, and bottomless neon-lit chasms. Kushina noticed an envelope on the desk picking it up and opening it with trembling hands, inside were one piece of paper reading the first on caused Kushina to break down crying, seeing his wife cry Minato read the letter it said,

 **To my dear**

 **'loved' Ex-family, I finally understood how you all feel about me, I wanted to say many more things but I won't have time for that, it wouldn't change anything I just wish you knew that you abandoned me, ignored me for my siblings and many other things but it seems my time is almost up but I have one more thing to say to you all "Fate rarely calls upon us at the moment of our choosing." As this opened my eyes to see the path before me, so Goodbye and good riddance Uzumaki Namikaze.**

After reading the letter it caused Minato and Kushina to pale showing them that this paper that Naruto ran away leaving his family behind…No they can't even call themselves that, Minato turned to run outside when he saw something, another picture, only it wasn't a scene it was two hulking metal titans opposite sides of the conflict and fire and destruction around them as they get ready for battle. As Minato lost within the picture he didn't notice Hiruzen walking towards him, "So my thought was right young Naruto had left and hasn't been here for quite some time." Hiruzen said as he looked at the painting that Naruto left behind.

"Lord Hiruzen, where is he? Where's my little Naruto!?" Kushina pleaded, wanting to find him and apologize for everything.

"He's gone Kushina," Hiruzen said, causing the parent's eyes to widen.

"W-What do you mean he's gone!" Minato demanded.

"Because of what you and Kushina have done to him, he ran away from the Village. I sent Tsume and the others to go out and find him...only to discover that Naruto has been taken." Hiruzen answered causing them to gasp in horror. "Because of you two, someone or something has a defenseless 4-year-old child. I hope your happy for what you've done. Good day, Minato and Kushina."

The former Hokage vanished in a swirl of leaves, leaving two heartbroken parents alone crying their eyes out.

 ***Flashback Ends***

It hasn't been a week and the fire Daimyo found out about Naruto's neglect giving Minato two choices have the villages funding cut or step down as Hokage. Minato chose to step down and name Tsunade the fifth Hokage she will be Hokage in couple days.

Minato was cut from his thoughts when Jiraiya came through the window "Sensei have you found him?" Minato asks his Jiraiya his teacher hoping for good news. Jiraiya frowned as he knew the news he was going to tell wasn't going to be easy. He remembered following Naruto's trail but he just disappears it also saddened him when it was his own godson was taken. He felt he was getting closer until he was called to where the toads told him the prophecy had changed.

"A child of my apprentice will either save the world or plunge it into darkness, aided by gods with the chains of destiny they will defeat a grave threat to humanity... This was the prophecy before Naruto disappeared." Jiraiya said and wait for Minato understand, what he was told he did allowing Jiraiya to continued, "And this is new prophecy A child will be reborn and become the Chosen One to rise to power he would gather the Autobots underneath him, severing their bonds of slavery and take back the and corruption on Cybertron to a land full of promise.

Minato was confused what was an Autobots and Cybertron could this place be where Naruto was taken to he just hope that they could find this Cybertron. "We fucked up didn't we?" questioned Minato, Jiraiya could only nod grimly.

 **Meanwhile back on Cybertron**

The pit floor was rectangular, and large enough for a regiment to hold exercises on, two hundred mechanometers on its short sides and half again that distance on the long sides. It was made of ore pebbles crushed and discarded from the foundries because their concentration of metals was too low to be useful. Spaced at irregular intervals around the floor, mechanical debris and burning heaps of trash made optics tricky and created endless opportunities for tactical ambush and blind-side attacks. Surrounding the floor, four levels of seating rose vertically to a ceiling a hundred mechanos overhead. Banks of lights in every frequency from infrared to ultraviolet drenched the floor in the merciless light. The stands were jammed with workers in the factories and elemental refineries of Kaon, stomping their feet in rhythm until the entire balconies of each level bounced up and down to nearly the limits of the metal frame's tensile strength. The noise was already overwhelming and would grow so loud in the course of the match that the gladiators would fight with no input from their audio arrays save a constant maxed-out white noise.

A hundred times and more, Megatronus had entered a pit, either this one or another much like it. Every time he had emerged victorious. The Tournament of Champions—this arena circuit's grandiose name for itself— had now changed the rules for Megatronus's opponents, allowing them to enter first and assume alt-form if they chose. Anything they could scan and assimilate might be turned into a camouflage shape. It was a cowardly way to fight, but it worked in Megatronus's favor. When he could give the opponent the first shot—the opportunity to ambush him—and survive to win a total victory despite this, he looked invincible.

Word was spreading. It was not so many stellar cycles ago that Megatronus had been merely one of the more fearsome gladiators in the Kaon pits. Now he was without question the most feared. It had not been so long ago that Megatronus still had no name. Now he had chosen a name to strike fear into the timid and inspire loyalty among those who would follow him. That it was not his name did not concern him in the least; he who was born with no name did not care where his name came from when he took one.

There, he thought. My opponent is there.


	5. Chapter 5

His optics had locked on a heap of discarded body parts, the kind of scrap heap seen in the aftermath of an industrial accident, when dead Cybertronians lay awaiting reclamation and reconstruction. It was obvious, but Megatronus had long since realized that few of his opponents had any tactical subtlety.

Above and around him, the crowd thundered. He looked up at them and raised his arms over his head, waving them into an even greater frenzy.

This had dual purposes. One, it got the crowd on his side. And two, seeing Megatronus pantomiming victory before the fight had even begun would enrage any opponent with a shred of self-respect. Angry opponents were careless opponents. Careless opponents were dead opponents. The logic was flawless.

From the pile of body parts erupted not one, but three fighting bots. They were collectively one of Shockwave's combiner experiments, he could tell right away from the way they moved together—and these three were primitive, drones barely capable of what more advanced Cybertronians considered consciousness. One immediately changed into an all-terrain vehicle, its tracks studded and magnetic; it headed for one wall of the pit, looking for a higher vantage point to establish a crossfire. Megatronus kept focused on the other two, which sprang immediately at him. The first he knocked down with a blaster shot; the second he swatted aside with a sweeping backhand. Keeping the ATV in his peripheral vision, Megatronus pivoted to prevent the two bot-form combiners from flanking him. One of them reared up and sprayed a stream of corrosive fluid at his face; he ducked aside, feeling the spray of it bum on his shoulder. The second made another pass at him, its blade-tipped hands flicking out at him.

Megatronus caught the combiner's arm just above the bladed wrist. Another jet of acid spattered across his back. With a roar, he broke the arm off and flung it into the crowd.

This was a calculated maneuver. He wanted them to know that he was dangerous, that when you went to watch Megatronus fight he was always on the verge of bringing the entire arena down on all of their heads. He fought like he knew he would die and did not care, but also like he knew he could never die and so could take any risk without fear. The arm, sparking and leaking the residue of the vibroblade's Energon reservoir, spun into the second deck; some spectators lunged out of its way while others reached to catch it. In a klik, Megatronus saw the blade slash and eat through a spectator's arm; saw another in the crowd grab the arm near the break and fling it up into the deck above him; saw fights break out in the aftermath…

But he could watch it no further, because the bot on the walls was opening up on him with concentrated energy fire beyond what he would have expected in a Cybertronian so small. The blasts knocked him off balance momentarily, and the acid-spitter closed in to take advantage.

Megatronus took the next volley of energy fire across his back as he closed with the mutilated combiner. Always finish a kill was his philosophy. Two wounded enemies were still two enemies. He closed the distance between them in a leap and used his larger mass and greater strength to drive the wounded combiner into the base of a pile of debris. Acid streaked his back again but Megatronus ignored it. He had taken the best shot that combiner could give and it would not kill him—at least not sooner than he could kill it and its wheeled comrade.

He held down the wounded bot, rammed the muzzle of his ion cannon into the joint where its neck met its multi-armed thorax, and blew it apart. Now the three bots would never be able to assume their combined form; this was another reason to finish a kill. A chittering sound reached him, even over the hysterical collective scream of the crowd at the match's first kill. Megatronus lifted the dead combiner up, swung it over his head, and flung it away to crash against the wall opposite the seating deck where he had thrown its arm. The acidsprayer landed on his back in the next moment, its pointed nozzle looking for vulnerable points on the back of Megatronus's head and neck.

He was Megatronus. He had no vulnerable points. He reached back with both hands, grabbed the acidspitter, and slammed it to the floor. Small pieces of it broke off, and Megatronus went in for the kill. This one he would do with his bare hands.

But surprises were yet in store. The combiner wriggled out of his grasp, then slithered with surprising speed across the broken terrain of the floor to join the ATV on the wall. The two of them then merged, combining into a single alternate form that leaped up into the air and hovered.

So, Megatronus thought. I was wrong. Even with only two of them, they can combine.

It stopped, hovering perhaps forty mechanos above the center of the pit floor. Extruded tentacular cables unspooled to catch on girders and keep the combiner up in the air. From there it rained energy blasts down on him from blaster-adapted legs, occasionally swooping lower to discharge globules of acid from its mouth. What strange forms the combiners were, Megatronus thought. To surrender their individuality and merge together like that. It repelled him. He hated them, all of them. Any Cybertronian willing to give up its own identity was not worthy of the name.

He changed form, adopting the alt-form he had learned soon after his creation, a tank adapted for heavy mining and demolition work. The combiner darted away as Megatronus's battery of proton blasters exploded across its carapace and severed one of its cables; it fell, swinging back down on the other cable toward the arena floor. Megatronus roared toward the higher end of the arena, closing with a speed it hadn't anticipated; it zigzagged through the pit, jinking so close to the balconies that the front-row audience alternately ducked away or reached out to grab it. Megatronus caught it up near the top of a debris pile that was the highest point on the arena floor, reassuming his proto-form as he collided with it and kept hold, one hand on an arm and the other clamped on its thorax. His optics momentarily flared out as it jammed an energy cannon in his face and fired. He ile of debris. The savage glee of the crowd vibrated in all of Megatronus's sensors.

Now was the time to end this. Megatronus reared up over the disoriented combiner and manifested twin maces in both hands. He stomped down on the combiner's back, holding it in place. It chattered, tried to divide, and failed. Its limbs scrabbled for purchase and leverage, but he was far too strong. Raising both maces, Megatronus let his gaze roam across the crowd, which was if anything more berserk than before. Combiners, he thought scornfully. Next they would send out Minicons for him to step on.

"Who defeats Megatronus?" he roared out, and struck. Lubricants and bits of combiner spattered him. "No one! No one defeats Megatronus!" He struck again, and again, butchering the combiner where it lay. Then he emptied his hands and raised his arms again. "I STILL FUNCTION!"

Striding from one end of the pit to the other, he pointed into the crowd. "Would you challenge me? You? Anyone! Any five of you, any ten of you, challenge me now for everything I have ever won! No one defeats Megatronus!" Back in the center of the pit, he kicked apart the remains of the combined Insecticon flyer and flung pieces of it into the crowd for trophies. "Remember!" he called out. "Remember that you saw Megatronus! It is the best day of your life! Remember!"

Their adulation rained down on him like Energon, like life itself. Never again will I be nameless, Megatronus thought.

MEGATRONUS! MEGATRONUS! MEGATRONUS!

Something odd happened as the chant intensified. The last syllable of the moniker started to fade out as the crowd made a collective choice to end the chant on a strong syllable. Megatronus listened, and felt a strange thrill as his name modulated, changed… transformed. He was renamed by his followers, given a name that no Cybertronian had ever carried. The arena shook with the force of the chant.

MEGATRON! MEGATRON! MEGATRON!

Yes, he thought. I will be Megatron.

And Cybertron will never be the same.

He raised his arms amid the smoke and debris of the pit, and the shattered bodies of his opponents. No Cybertronian could oppose him.

Megatron was destined for great things. Soon he would no longer be a gladiator. Soon he would lead the gladiators.

He strode victorious out of the pit and into the complex of abandoned maintenance tunnels below a factory that had once churned out components for semi-autonomous mining machinery. Now most of the subterranean space in the factory complex was given over to the illicit but highly profitable gladiator tournaments. Gladiator mechas and Cybertronians lived, trained, fought, and were repaired here. The ones who died were turned into useful scrap.

Until perhaps an orbital cycle ago, all of this had been under the control of a syndicate of crime bosses who ran the gladiators like machines. Who was to know or care? The caste that produced workers in the factories of Kaon was beneath the notice of the higher castes. As long as raw materials were turned into finished goods, the engineering and government castes never spared a thought for their fellow Cybertronians who slaved in the refineries and smelters. The criminal syndicate took advantage of this in a number of ways. One was the creation of the gladiator circuit; another was the manipulation of results in that circuit.

Megatron had chafed under the control of the bosses for some time. Things came to a breaking point when they came to him one day offering a deal. You're the finest gladiator we've ever seen, they said. A real immortal. But the stands aren't as full. They won't be as long as everyone knows you're going to win.

At that point, in a room much like the one he stood in now, after a match much like the one he'd just fought in, Megatron had known what was coming.

We need someone else to win, the bosses said. Not every time. But once or twice. Starting next time you go into the pit.

It had been a moment of the sort that comes along only once, perhaps, in a sentient being's life. The moment, Megatron reflected, when you decided whether you were going to surrender control to someone else… or fight to the death to keep it.

He had decided to fight. Moments later, the bosses and their strong-arm bodyguards were in pieces, save one. Megatron sent him out to spread the word: The gladiator pits were under new management.

Now Megatronus was no longer. Megatron thought of that moment, that transformative moment, as he came into the infirmary and saw Soundwave and Shockwave waiting for him. "Soon you'll be leading more than gladiators," Shockwave said, coming over to examine Megatron's damage. Shockwave was Megatron's pet mad scientist, the kind of mind who would take two critically damaged gladiators and try to make one superCybertronian out of them. He had no ethical sense that Megatron had ever been able to detect, and Megatron did not trust him; but Shockwave was a believer in Megatron… at least for now. There would come a time, Megatron knew, when Shockwave would turn on him. Until then, the Cybertronian genius would be Megatron's most loyal ally.

Soundwave was a different matter. Spymaster extraordinaire, controller of a horde of Minicons so small that Megatron could crush several of them with a footstep, Soundwave was the only gladiator Megatron had ever fought who had a chance of beating him—they had met in a match to first wound rather than death; otherwise only one of them would still exist. He was nearly as single-minded as Megatron, nearly as dedicated. He possessed a suite of abilities that Megatron very nearly envied, with his multiple transformations and the triple Minicons that he contained within his proto-form and could eject into combat at any moment. These were Rumble, Ravage, and Laserbeak.

Megatron looked around and did not see any Minicons. That suited him well. He did not trust the Minicons, any of them. He was unsuited to subterfuge, disliked telling lies except when it was absolutely necessary, and would have much preferred to take whatever he wanted on Cybertron by straightforward force of arms.

Part of the reason he kept Soundwave and Shockwave close was that he trusted them to remind him when this was not possible. Megatron was mighty—he knew that—but he could still benefit from associates whose abilities complemented his.

"Minimal scarring from the acids," Shockwave pronounced. "The energy weapons had little effect. As is typical, Megatronus, you emerge from a battle with few signs of ever having been in a battle. What fascinating prototypes I could create from you."

"Megatron."

Shockwave stopped in mid-reverie, blinking and returning to the real world from his imagined army of Megatron-inspired supermechs. "What?"

"You heard the crowd. I am Megatron."

Soundwave and Shockwave looked at each other. "All hail Megatron!" they said.

 **Orion POV**

I looked up at the stars, and between myself and the stars the twin points of Moon Bases One and Two. The other near-Cybertron object, Trypticon Station, was out of sight on the other side of the planet. I walked the swooping streets and bridges of Iacon, pondering some of what I had heard Megatron say.

 _Freedom is every Cybertronian's right!_

Perhaps. But what did freedom mean? If there were no castes, if Cybertronians were not organized and channeled into productive lines… if every Cybertronian simply decided what he wanted to do, the entire planet would descend into chaos. I remembered being taught that freedom consisted of being free to contribute to the tasks that were appropriate and necessary to the caste you were born into. But that moment I saw a Lush green land with a light blue sky and white fluffy things in it but I could not tell what it was until I noticed a group of Organix having fun they seem to be a family, but yet something was off about them I do not know why it Disturbed me so but soon as I started to think about it was gone, Unlimited choice, rather than leading to freedom, led to the paralysis of confusion.

This was the teaching of… who, exactly? Sentinel Prime had never said it out loud, but he had overseen the rise of the caste system, preserving Cybertron when individuality threatened to tear the civilization of the Cybertronians into contending splinters.

 _Who does the caste system benefit? The higher castes! Who do the higher castes live off? You._

I climbed a tower to an observation deck from which I could see all of Iacon. The contours of Cybertron, the living expression of Primus, arced away in all directions. Canyons leading to the interior, where Plasma welled up from the Well at the center of Cybertron, split the surface. Far, far to the west, I could see the highest peaks of the Manganese Mountains. To the north, over the horizon, was Six Lasers Over Cybertron. Thinking of the amusement park, I felt a twinge of anger, I had never been there. It was the preserve of the higher castes. Only rarely did lower-caste Cybertronians pass through its gates, and I had not yet been one of those fortunate lower-caste individuals.

Individuals know what is best for them! Who but I know what I need? Who but you may decide what is best for you?

I would like to go to Six Lasers, thought to myself.

But if anyone walked up to Six Lasers and demanded to get in whenever the desire struck, the park would be overwhelmed. Structure was necessary. And individuals would never impose Structure on themselves. Would they?

Surely not. Sentient beings banded together and made decisions for the collective good. Not all of those decisions would benefit every individual.

I was tangled up, uncertain what I should be thinking or feeling.

What I need, is a conversation that doesn't happen inside my own head. I looked down my little turbo Fox Kurama "what should I do Kurama." kneel down to pet him knowing that I couldn't get a reply from him only small yep, "let's go see Jazz." I picked up Kurama and made my way to Jazz home.


	6. Chapter 6

**3rd person view**

"What should we do," Jazz said, after Orion Pax had tracked him down and met him at Maccadam's Old Oil House, "is go to Kaon and see the gladiator fights for ourselves."

"Are you serious? They're illegal. It's not even legal to see one, I don't think."

"That doesn't seem to stop any of the people who do it," Jazz pointed out. He drained off his can of Visco and waved at the bartender for another. "We could go, you know. And if some authority discovers us, if we get arrested or questioned, I'll claim it's a cultural investigation. That is what I do, you know."

This much was true. Orion Pax had met Jazz because he was a cultural investigator, charged—more or less—with making sense out of all of the communications and other data that Orion Pax harvested from the Grid every day. Jazz came into the Hall of Records looking for this or that bit of history often enough that he and Orion Pax crossed paths regularly. They had developed a friendship. Orion Pax was a little intimidated by Jazz's carefree attitude toward life and authority. His caste was enough higher than Orion Pax's that he could get away with more—but it was also true that Jazz was more interested in getting away with things than Orion Pax ever had been. Where he saw an opportunity to bend rules, he bent them, and always just a little bit further than was perhaps prudent.

He sipped his own Visco. "Kaon is all the way on the other side of the planet. I've never been anywhere near there." He realized as he finished speaking that he had meant the words to come out as dismissive, but they sounded wistful.

There was a great deal of Cybertron that Orion Pax had never seen. He had heard its citizens speaking from every nook and cranny, every tower and station of the planet; he had put their conversations and transmissions into useful categories so that people like Jazz could come into the Hall of Records and use the work of Orion Pax as raw material to fashion theories with.

He felt a sudden kinship with the workers in the factories. They made machines. He made data. Were they so different?

As soon as he mentioned this to Jazz, the cultural investigator laughed. "Yes, Orion. You're different. Your work won't kill you. And when you can't do it anymore, nobody's going to throw you into a heap and turn your broken body into datacubes or image matrices."

Jazz's words hit Orion Pax like a physical blow. "You're not pulling any punches," he commented.

"Those who are fortunate should know how fortunate they are," Jazz said. Then he sipped at his Visco and waited for Orion Pax to get his thoughts in order.

"I wonder if I could get in contact with him," Orion Pax said after a silence. The Visco, as it always did, invigorated him, filled him with possibilities.

"With who? This Megatron?" Jazz shrugged. "Possibly. Why would you want to?"

"You don't find him interesting?"

 **Back in The Hidden Leaf Village**

It's been a couple of weeks since Kushina started working on tracking seal to bring back her son Naruto. Kushina managed to scratch the surface of the track seal and field but she's nowhere near done and her two daughters seem to notice that their mothers avoiding them more and their behavior and attitudes started to change one of them Naruko blames her brother for running off leaving their mother heartbroken and their father as well now, their mother doesn't even want to leave the library for who knows what she's doing in there all she could do is blame her brother that idiot stupid worthless of a brother so of her problems. As for Narumi training day in and day out to get strong enough to find her big brother that she love with all her heart, she blames herself for her big brother running away all he wanted was their parents attention and but he never got any of that she and her sister did leave him all alone in the background she knew deep down her sister didn't care for her brother and she stopped training Narumi noticed something in the sky, looking up at the Starry Sky seen a shooting star fly by she wishes on that star that one day she'll find her big brother but for now she has to get strong enough to find him and help him to bring them back home.

 **back on Cybertron**

Jazz laughed. "I find everything interesting. This is what I was made to do, find things interesting. Listen, Pax. If you want to go to Kaon, let's go to Kaon. I can get travel passes for research. I can claim that I need someone like you to harvest data. Should I talk to the Archivist?"

Orion Pax considered this for some time as absentmindedly petting Kurama head. "History moves in cycles," he said after awhile. "This much I've seen just rooting around in the archives."

"I thought you weren't supposed to be rooting around in the archives," Jazz said. "Careful you don't step outside the boundaries of your caste, my friend."

"How can I not?" Orion Pax asked. He drank off the rest of his Visco. "I have a mind. I can think, and analyze."

Jazz waited the perfect amount of time before responding. "If you say so."

"Easy for you to joke. You can do whatever you want. I'm a data clerk." Orion Pax leaned over the table toward his friend. He trusted Jazz implicitly, and could say things to him that he would never say to anyone else. "Where is it written that I have to stay a data clerk? Is there some ledger somewhere that the Primes keep, out in one of the Spiral Arms? Is my name in it next to the designation Data Clerk? I don't think so." "You sound a bit like your gladiator friend," Jazz said.

"He's not my friend." Orion Pax thought about it. "But perhaps it is time that I talked to him."

He knew how the Grid worked. He spent his days wading through its matrices and intersections. If there was one thing Orion Pax had learned as a consequence of this, it was how to get a transmission across the Grid without anyone but the intended recipient knowing about it. During his next shift, in the dim silence of the data-mining section in the Hall of Records, Orion Pax did his job, but while he did his job he also was formulating a plan to get a secret transmission through to this gladiatorial insurgent Megatron.

Different possibilities for what to say overwhelmed him. He thought about it for the duration of his shift; then, as he was due to leave, he decided on something simple.

 _What you say is interesting, but more people are hearing than you realize. Let's speak._

He attached contact information to it, using a dead-end bit of storage space that wasn't coded for anything in the current Grid configuration. Then he sent it off and stayed late, combing the Grid for more signs of what Megatron might be thinking, doing, saying… or planning.

The next day he met Jazz at Maccadam's again. "He answered," Orion Pax said.

"'He' being this Megatron, I take it. What did you say to him?" Jazz asked.

"That he had more of an audience than he might have expected."

"And what did he say?"

Orion Pax shook his head in amazement. "He said, 'You are more right than you know. I am also more right than you know.'"

Jazz laughed long and loud. "Confidence," he said. "No shortage of it in this one, is there?" "Then he agreed that we could meet," Orion Pax said.

This put a serious look on Jazz's face. "Are you ready to take the chance on this? I was flippant about it before, but it's something you should consider. The consequences for you are potentially much worse than for me."

"I'm ready," Orion Pax said.

Alpha Trion tapped the tip of the Quill against his desktop. Before him, scrolling in text on a screen, was the substance of a conversation between his clerk Orion Pax and the gladiator-turned-revolutionary. A loaded word, _revolutionary_ , but it seemed to fit, if Megatron's side of the conversation could be taken at anything like face value.

 **OP: In my** caste **, I may read and I may index, but I am forbidden to analyze.**

 **M: How do you know where to index if you don't analyze first?**

 **OP: I try not to ask myself questions that don't have answers I can do anything about.**

 **M: Who has told you that you can't do anything about the answers? I never even had a name. I went out to die for the pleasure of strangers. Now I am Megatron, and I will fight when and where and for what reasons I please.**

 **OP: Fight who?**

 **M: Those who would tell me… like they tell you… that we do not have the right to determine our own fates. Interesting that even in Iacon my words are being heard.**

 **OP: It is my task to hear all words.**

 **M: But you don't answer all of what you hear. And surely you don't answer all of what you hear on channels that you hide for fear of being eavesdropped on.**

 **OP: No.**

 **M: A great many Cybertronians would love to have Iacon as their home. Yet you are there and still unsatisfied. What does that tell you?**

 **OP: We should meet.**

 **M: Should we? Why would I meet you?**

 **OP: If you have goals beyond Kaon, you're going to need to tailor your message so it will resonate beyond the castes who smelt ore and die in the pits.**

 **M: Or the rest of Cybertron should learn to understand those castes. Even you do not, and you consider yourself one of us.**

 **OP: Then show me what I do not understand.**

Alpha Trion closed his eyes. It was beginning. The Covenant had seen it clearly, and now he was beginning to see the dim outlines of it. The days of Orion Pax, data clerk in the Hall of Records, were drawing to a close. New days, of upheaval and strife, were on the horizon. This much was certain.

What was uncertain, Alpha Trion reflected, was how much he could do to influence the coming events in the correct direction. Orion Pax was raw, and young, and not the one he would have chosen.

Yet it was not given to him to make the choice. He, like every other Cybertronian, would have to experience the future only at the moment of its becoming the present.


	7. Chapter 7

**Orion POV**

Over the next cycles, I kept up with my correspondence with Megatron. These conversations honed on my own sense of what I believed regarding castes, individuality, and free will. According to Megatron, their dialogue was also refining his ideas. "You force me to think clearly, librarian," Megatron said via videolink several cycles after their first interaction. "A leader needs this."

I thought that some of Megatron's ideas were still unclear. What exactly, he asked, did Megatron intend to do? Were they going to take their grievances to the High Council? What sort of plan was contemplated?

"I have other associates considering these questions, too," Megatron said, and he would say no more. This made me nervous—for good reason, according to Jazz. "You need to be very sure that you know what you're getting into here," Jazz said. "I'll stand by and watch, whatever happens; but you could be letting yourself in for serious consequences. Right now you're just talking; the minute you do more than that, there are laws involved. Are you prepared to break laws?"

I couldn't answer because of I didn't have one for this question, I asked it of Megatron.

"Who makes the laws?" was Megatron's answer. "Did anyone consult you? Did anyone consult me?" I had no answer for that, either.

"Listen, my friend," Jazz said. "What would happen if anytime one of us felt left out of the law-making process, he started a revolution? Can you imagine what this place would look like?"

"No," I said. "We're a long way from that. We've got the opposite, don't you see? Nobody ever says anything. Who decided that we should be in castes? What do our leaders say about it now?" I thought long and hard to find the answer but nothing came up the only one person that came up was Sentinel Prime was not a visible leader; the High Council busied itself with the minutiae of governance and avoided the big questions. Across Cybertron, argued Megatron—and I had to agree—Cybertronians had grown lazy, satisfied with what was handed to them. "Is this the same race that built the Space Bridges?" Megatron asked rhetorically. "Are we still alight with the AllSpark? Then why do we let others speak for us, act for us, decide what we will and will not do?"

There was something different about him. I could see it as well as any other sentient being who spent time in contact with Megatron. He was difficult to ignore, and when he spoke of individual freedom it was easy to think—no matter how many Cybertronians might be in his audience—that he was talking directly to you.

Still, I had never met him in person. He wasn't sure the risk was worth it. In truth, he wasn't sure what the risks were.

Megatron began to encourage him. "If you would understand Cybertron, librarian, you must see Kaon," he said.

"Maybe if you saw Iacon, you would understand Cybertron better yourself," I countered.

"Oh, I will see Iacon. Have no fear of that," Megatron said.

Something about the tone of his voice made me want to change the subject. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke a fight with Megatron when he was just beginning to understand what Megatron's ideas meant… and what he, me, had to contribute to the discussion. I believed some things in common with the hard-bitten survivor of Kaon's pits, but in other ways, he felt that despite their commonalities, there were fundamental differences in the way they approached the question of freedom and will.

"Why Megatronus?" I asked. I had heard Megatron answer the question before, in slightly different ways. I moved along, refined his ideas and rhetoric. I realized he was witnessing the growth and rise of a genuinely important leader… but of what? And where would he lead? "I assume the name of one of the Thirteen because—although only one of them ever called himself the Fallen—they all fell away from their original mission. They all failed their future, which is our present. I took that name because the principles I believe in have fallen. Freedom has no caste, so there is no place for it in Cybertron today. History makes some bots villains for doing what they thought was right; if that happens to me as well, so be it. I can only do what is the right thing to do." Megatron cycled through his alt-form weapons as he spoke. At the periphery of the screen I could see some of Megatron's inner circle. I only knew two of them, Soundwave and Shockwave. Soundwave carried Minicons, which made me nervous. Minicons made me think of surveillance and treachery. Shockwave was cold and formal, a dedicated scientist out of place among the bulk of Megatron's followers.

It seemed, to judge from the single example of Shockwave, that Megatron was beginning to realize his goal of bringing different castes together. Scientists and steelworkers—let alone gladiators—seldom mixed unless one was giving the other orders, and that relationship, I could see, was reversed here. Megatron was clearly in charge.

"In the pits of Kaon there is no second-guessing," he continued. "There are no shades of gray, no fine distinctions. You find those in the Hall of Records, perhaps, but not here. Down here you make a decision and commit to it with every atom… or else you die."

 **meanwhile back at the hidden Leaf Village**

Kushina stood most of her days in a library trying to finish the tracking seal to bring her son back to them to her the most, with few of the components down for the tracking seal she could hear clips and Snippets of chatter coming from the other side one of the voices sounds like Naruto but it wasn't very clear to hear. She tried to listen closely to her baby boy's voices "ou really think the Thir-teen thou-ght a -about th eir acti ons this ay?"

She smiles knowing that she's getting somewhere it just take more time and effort to bring her son back home wherever he is, but she has noticed a change within her daughters Naruko is becoming more arrogant than an Uchiha and it's starting to get on her nerves she's been acting like a spoiled brat ever since Naruto ran away she hoped that Minato could bring their daughter back into shape and break her out of this spoiled brat attitude. And there is Narumi should become more dedicated to being a Shinobi training day in and day out only the stop to rest to eat food not being a kid. Kushina kind of blames herself for her daughter's new changes of attitude but she can't stop now she needs to finish the tracking seal to bring her son back home.

 **At Hokage's Office**

Minato seems to be drowning himself in paperwork but he couldn't seem to get anything done he let out a tired side as he looked at the picture frame that had a happy family all except for one who's standing far away with a sad look on his face, "I really messed up..." Minato muttered. "It's not fair...I shoulda been a better father to you Naruto I'm so sorry my son!" Minato said as he started to cry for his son and for the lost time that he should have been a father to Naruto doing everything a father and his son should teaching him jutsus everything, but he threw it all away.

 **back in Cybertron with Orion POV**

I looked around. I was alone in his wing of the Hall of Records and had done what he could to insulate this channel from the normal data-harvesting protocols that applied to traffic into and out of the Hall. Still, I spoke quietly. "You really think the Thirteen thought about their actions this way?"

"It doesn't matter to me," Megatron said. "Megatronus has been gone for a long time. I am here. You are here. What we do is not up to Megatronus, or to Liege Maximo, or any other myth. What we do is up to us."

"Who is us?" I asked a few solar cycles later.

"Whoever wants to be," Megatron said with a laugh. "When you're taking on the world, you can't be choosy about who wants to be on your side."

"So you have followers in Kaon," I said. "Where else?"

"That's the kind of question a spy would ask."

"If you were worried about that, we would have stopped talking a long time ago."

"Perhaps, perhaps not. Soundwave says I should worry that you will betray me." Megatron laughed. "I say back to him that if I thought you were going to betray me, I would meet you in the arena and settle things like warriors. Would you fight me in the ring for your principles, librarian? Can you tell your principles from mine?"

"I think I can," I said. "And I would fight anyone for them."

As I said it, I realized it was true. Always I had known that there was a larger world beyond the mundane horizons of the work I did and the caste I was part of. Hearing Megatron speak had lit a fire inside me that was not Megatron's fire, but mine. It was as if my Spark had never come to its full brightness until it had struck against the revolutionary ideas of this criminal gladiator.

"Then I will tell you. I have followers in Blaster City and across the Badlands to Slaughter City. I could make the spaceport at Hydrax mine tomorrow," Megatron said, as I fit those place names into a map of Cybertron into my mind. "And across Cybertron, there are pockets of Cybertronians who hear me. They will follow when I call them into action." "Which will be…?

"When the time is right. Remember, librarian. We have still never met. Until we can look each other in the face, we are discussing things that might never happen, the way we look up at the pieces of a Space Bridge and ask ourselves what it would be like if we could cross again to Velocitron or the Hub. We are friends, having a friendly conversation about things we believe."

Friends thought I. As unlikely as it might have seemed, this was correct. I was becoming friends with an agitator, a criminal, and possible traitor to the Council.

But in a society that was most of the way along a descent into stasis, what else could any right-thinking Cybertronian do?

"Tricky question," said Jazz when I asked him later. "I've started to look into these things. Your friend Megatronus—or Megatron—has an interesting history." "I know about his history," I said while petting Kurama as he purred.

Jazz said, "I know you do. But I did not and I thought I would look and see what I could find. What do you think he wants, Pax?"

I thought about this question for a long time. "He wants the Cybertron that used to be," he said eventually. "The Cybertron where you were not doomed to a Guild and caste the moment you emerged from the Well of AllSparks. The Cybertron where any Cybertronian could become anything. The Cybertron that looked to the stars, that fought the Quintessons, that challenged itself to reach out and see how far its grasp could extend."

"That's what you want," Jazz said. "It's time you stopped pretending otherwise." Again I took some time to think. "Yes, it is," I agreed.

"Good. I won't say you're wrong. I will tell you, my friend, that this is a dangerous line of thought. How do you think the upper castes are going to react to this idea? Do you think they want a return to the days when a Cybertronian's success was based on merit and dedication?" Jazz laughed at his own sarcasm.

"If I can't make myself do what's right," said I "how can I expect anyone else to?"

Jazz nodded. They looked up into the endless black of the sky. "Fine," Jazz said. "Just so you're not surprised when you find out that everyone else isn't likely to hold themselves to the same standard."

"Did I tell you that Megatron said he'd fight me if he thought I was going to betray him?" I said.

"Very funny," Jazz said.

"He did."

"Then watch your back," Jazz said. "If he brought that up, he's already half-convinced himself it will eventually happen."

I laughed. Then he said, "I better get practicing and learn how to fight."

And I did, carving out time every solar cycle to practice with others of my caste. I worked on the altform weapons I could create from my proto-form, the ion cannon, and Energon blasters. And I learned the ins and outs of the sword and axe that I could carry or manifest as another partial alteration. As I fought these mock battles I thought of Megatron, who for most of his existence had fought such battles for the stakes of his Only I thirst for knowledge, both of the past and of all the things about present-day Cybertron I had never thought worth knowing, kept me coming back.

That is my responsibility to my caste.

There the conflict inherent in my friendship with Megatron presented itself most clearly. It was because I was friends with Megatron that I had a rekindled interest in what was happening around me in this Cybertron that I lived on and experienced with other Cybertronians—yet if I kept any loyalty to my caste, that brought me into conflict with Megatron, who would abolish all castes immediately upon gaining the power to do so.

And wouldn't I as well? I asked myself. The answer was: perhaps. I understood Megatron's reasons, and perhaps even more than the gladiator did I wanted the freedom and initiative that would come with the end of caste and Guild.

Where they differed, I suspected, was in method. I believed the change could be created through political means: spreading new ideas, watching them catch fire, attracting enough followers to their vision that eventually the High Council and Sentinel Prime would have to take notice. That was the vision of mine.

Sometimes I was concerned that Megatron did not have as much patience as I did. I was beginning to attract followers of my own, though. Messages were appearing that mentioned me and not Megatron or mentioned Megatron only as secondary to me. I was, despite my best efforts at remaining concealed, becoming known.

Things were going to come to a head very shortly. It was time, at last, to meet Megatron face-to-face.

I looked at the screen of my workstation. I dictated a note to Alpha Trion asking for time free of work. On my way out of the Hall of Records, the Archivist contacted me directly, but I did not answer. I could not think of what to say, could not take the chance that Alpha Trion would convince me not to go.

I saw clearly what needed to be done. All that remained was to do it.


	8. Chapter 8

_**A/N: Hello fellow readers its Dreadwing346 here to say sorry for the long wait for an update for the next chapter to Rebirth, I had a bad case of writer's block and school and work all together we're a nasty combination to come up with anything to write for the story or any of my stories but I will persevere for the summer. But I wish to inform you on further chapters to rebirth will be solely focused on what's going on Cybertron and later on when Naruto/Orion becomes Optimus Prime and slowly going back into the ninja world but small portions of it because I'm planning to re-create the holde War and how the struggles of the people of Cybertron before they came to Earth.**_

 **Third person view**

The first thing Orion Pax thought about Kaon was that he had never seen anything like it. Of course, he had seen images, but experiencing the place with all of his sensory arrays at once, getting the totality of the experience…

He had come to Kaon in his alt-form, rolling down through Kalis and near the Well of AllSparks, source of every living Cybertronian. Then he crossed the Torus States and entered the Sea of Rust, with the Sonic Canyons to the south. Skirting the Canyons, Orion Pax entered the Badlands and watched as the groomed, civilized surface of Cybertron was replaced by rugged, broken territory. Metallic ridges and sinuous canyons filled axle-deep with rust were the norm; in places, ancient ruins sprouted from the formations. Orion Pax knew that the Badlands had been the scene of great deeds and immensely important moments in the history of Cybertron, but he had never gained access to the records that might have told him what those deeds and moments were. So he rolled on, drinking in all of the information he could by observing the environment around him.

Once, he imagined, this had been an industrial area but not a wasteland. Now it was hard to see it as anything but a dead remnant of a civilization irrevocably in decline.

That, however, was what Orion Pax was out to change. He and Megatron together could spearhead that change.

The city of Kaon sprawled across a plateau three times the surface area of Iacon. Over it hung a perpetual cloud of smoke and heavy-metal compounds. Whereas the architecture of Iacon reached up and out, defined by towers and arches, stepping-stone ridges of residential blocks and marvels of engineering, Kaon, in contrast, was like an endless tumble of blackened rubble, immense mechanical structures collapsing onto one another, and newer generations of the same built upon them. It looked as if it had been bombed from orbit, then pieced back together by blind Minicons. In alt-form, Orion Pax rumbled through the outskirts of Kaon, returning to protoform when he got toward the center of the city, where the roads became tangled and overhung with conduits, catwalks… it was impossible to keep oriented without satellite and Grid interface. You couldn't see in Kaon. There was no way to understand where you were in relation to the rest of the city. In Iacon you had a sense of space and location.

What must it have been like to live here from the moment you came out of the Well of AllSparks?

Walking now, Orion Pax looked for the building Megatron had described to him. It was to the south of Kaon's center and in between two slag pits so deep that Orion Pax could not see to the bottom unless he came right to the edge. The building itself was a pyramidal black monument, squared at the top for a landing pad. Inside it, Megatron had said, was an abandoned cyber-hydraulic work. It was the perfect venue for gladiatorial matches as well as black-market production of optics and auditory components. Those degraded fast in the heavily polluted atmosphere of Kaon, and especially in the gladiatorial arenas, where injuries to sensory arrays were extremely common in surviving combatants.

But it was below those workshops that the real action took place. For nearly half a hic below street level, interconnected subterranean levels of support mechanisms, workers' housing, materials storage, and refinery pipelines formed a perfect series of spaces for gladiatorial matches. There were more than a dozen places like it just in Kaon; twenty more in Slaughter City; more yet in various outlying settlements in the Badlands and right up to the eastern terminus of the Sonic Canyons.

Here, though, was the heart of the gladiator profession. All the fighting Cybertronians from other districts

came here to make their names—literally, in Megatron's case—and now that Megatron had thrown out the criminal syndicate that had controlled the pits, he was in the process of turning the gladiators into the seeds of an army. Orion Pax approached the pyramid as if it held the secret of a Cybertron he had never known existed.

At the side door, two Cybertronians—one slightly smaller than Orion Pax, black and white with eyes like red searchlights, and one enormous, four or five times his mass and carrying a mace the size of Orion Pax at least—appeared to block his way. "Match entrance is on the other side," the small one said.

"You must be Barricade," Orion Pax said. He turned to the big one. "And you're Lugnut, right? Megatron told me you might be out here. I'm here to meet him."

"Just strolling through beautiful Kaon to meet the boss, are you?" Barricade said. "Funny. He didn't say anything about that to us."

"You sure?" Orion Pax glanced at Lugnut, who wasn't speaking. He thought he understood. Lugnut would watch whatever happened until one of his superiors told him to act.

The trick with beings like that was to convince them you were one of their superiors without them ever knowing you were trying to convince them.

"Lugnut. He must have told you," Orion Pax said.

Lugnut looked surprised that anyone was talking to him. "Could be," he said. "I don't always—"

"Shut up," Barricade snapped. He glared at Orion Pax. "You don't know what the boss said to who."

Orion Pax said, "I know what he said to me."

Standoff. Orion Pax could feel the tension. Barricade couldn't stand the idea of being shown up in front of Lugnut; he was that easy to manipulate. Or was he? Was he making this easy to test Orion Pax?

Kaon was a long, long way from the House of Records in Iacon.

"Listen," Orion Pax said. He thought he'd already made his point. "I'll stay here with the big guy. You go ask the boss. Easy, right?"

"I don't need you to tell me what's easy and what isn't," Barricade said. But he was already moving to go back inside. Perfect. "Lugnut," he added with the door open. "Don't let this mech go anywhere."

Mech thought Orion Pax. He's got to put me in my place. Gladiators wore their emotions on their sleeves, it seemed. He wondered if he should have reacted to the insult, or if a reaction would have been too provocative. Then he started thinking that he was being too deliberative, overthinking everything he did, overanalyzing everything others did.

What else? Megatron would have said. What else are you going to do when you've been told for your entire existence that you can't analyze, can't think for yourself… and then you get the chance?

Yes, Orion Pax thought. And on the heels of that thought, another: He might have said it even before Megatron.

It occurred to Orion Pax that he was on the verge of becoming a revolutionary. It was, in fact, a revolutionary act just meeting Megatron, whose reputation was already spreading. There were rumbles around the Grid that Sentinel Prime was "concerned," and that the High Council was "considering action."

If he himself kept on with his present course of action, Sentinel Prime might well express concerns about him. A data clerk from the Hall of Records, drawing the attention of Sentinel Prime! Or the High Council!

It was hard to imagine.

Still… what else could he do? Every Cybertronian deserved the right of self-determination. Orion Pax believed this, and his friend Megatron believed it as well.

As if summoned, Megatron loomed in the pyramid's doorway. Behind him glowered Barricade. "I see you've met some of the indigenous semi-intelligent life," Megatron said. They clasped hands. "It is good to see "And you," responded Orion Pax. Friend. There was a word he had not used much… perhaps only with Jazz, and some of the now-forgotten fellow students in his first training sessions out of the Well of AllSparks, when they had initially learned how to assume alt-forms, and learned what their natural alt-forms would be.

Inside, the pyramid was largely hollowed out. The internal space was crisscrossed with girders and catwalks, and much of its floor lined with spectator seating. Only the farthest comers appeared to still be used for manufacturing.

"We have a separate aerial tournament that takes place here," Megatron explained. "I fought here a few times. Mostly underground, though."

"You're running it all now?" Orion Pax prompted as Kurama nuzzled Orion nick cables as he was laying on his shoulder plates.

"Barricade takes care of the day-to-day details, and Shockwave handles keeping the gladiators healthy and putting them back together." Far off in the dimness, Orion Pax heard the skitter of tiny servos he always associated with Minicons. Megatron chuckled. "Soundwave spies on everyone," he said. "Even me, and especially you. This is how he demonstrates his loyalty."

They fell into a conversation then, as Megatron gave Orion Pax a tour of the pyramid and the uppermost subterranean levels. They passed through a training facility where ranks of Cybertronians did martial exercises under the direction of a drillmaster. Not far from there, a level down was a vast machine shop in which armor and weapons were coming together under the skilled and watchful eye of wordsmiths.

"This is all for the gladiator pits?" Orion Pax asked.

"It might be," said Megatron. "Depending on what else might require the services of a well-trained fighting force." A thrill sparkled through Orion Pax's circuits then. "My idea is that we advance our cause by spreading the concepts of freedom and self-determination," he said. "We talk, we argue, we convince. Sentinel Prime is slow to react; the High Council will dither endlessly unless a problem walks directly into their chambers and demands to be solved. I don't think armed insurrection is going to be necessary." "Maybe that's what it looks like from Iacon," Megatron said.

"It does." Orion Pax persisted. "You came up through the gladiator ranks. Every problem looks to you like it can be solved by fighting."

"And every problem looks to you like it can be solved by reading," Megatron came back.

"Sounds like a compromise is in order," Barricade interrupted. He had only just caught up with them after disappearing for a few cycles on some errand. "And around here, Orion Pax, compromise means agree with the boss."

"Whoa there," Megatron said. "This is a scholar, from Iacon. He's not an ore hauler or smelter you can threaten. Orion Pax is a friend. He is my friend and the movement's friend." He locked optics with Barricade, whose ruby spotlight gaze was the first to drop. "Understood, boss," he said. "No offense meant." "None taken," Orion Pax said.

"Still," Megatron said. "We have talked and talked and talked. And here, in this pyramid, where so many like me have fought and died, we have talked and talked of freedom. It is time to act. Some Cybertronians loyal to me are out searching the planet for some of the artifacts of the Primes; if it is granted to us to find them, that will be a sign that our cause is just. And others…" He trailed off as if uncertain how to go on.

"Others what?" asked Orion Pax.

"Our ideas have taken root in different ways, my friend. Some of the more combative and fiery citizens of Kaon do not believe that ideas spread by talking. They believe that ideas spread by action."

"Then we need to distance ourselves from them before they do anything stupid," Orion Pax said immediately. "Violence at this stage will be counterproductive." "Counterproductive? Not wrong?" Megatron said.

It took Orion Pax a moment to notice that the great gladiator was teasing him. "Of course, wrong," he said. "Megatron, if a bunch of firebrands goes around Cybertron destroying things and putting our names on those acts, our ideas will be tarnished as well. We'll be written off as radicals. We'll be defined by the worst excesses of our followers."

"Perhaps," Megatron said. "Another way to look at it is that if we truly believe in self-determination and free will, we must respect the right of our followers to disagree with our methods and choose their own."

In a philosophical sense, of course, this was true. But Orion Pax knew—he could tell, could feel it right down to the Spark in his body—that their philosophical discussion was not going to stay philosophical for long.

Time was going to come when he would have to insist on doing things his way. But that time had not come yet. Not here, on Megatron's home ground, among Megatron's followers, who did not yet know that many of Megatron's ideas, in fact, came from Orion Pax.

Of course, the reverse was also true. "So you are with me, librarian?" Megatron asked.

Orion Pax looked around at the inner circle of ex-gladiators and other low-caste Cybertronians. He did not fit in, yet he was not afraid. "I am with your ideas," he said. "They are my ideas as well."

"Excellent," Megatron said. He turned to the gladiators who had paused in their work to watch them. A more brutish lot of Cybertronians, thought Orion Pax, could not have existed outside Slaughter City. And these were the Cybertronians who would usher in the new age of free will. "Cybertronians!" Megatron called out. "My friend Orion Pax! Together we will lead all sentient citizens of Cybertron to a new age, a restoration of our former greatness!"

MEGATRON! MEGATRON! MEGATRON!

Megatron leaned close to Orion Pax as the chant washed over them. "Soon they will chant your name, too," he said.

"As long as they hold to the ideals," said Orion Pax, "they can chant whatever they want to."

Megatron laughed. "We need a name for our movement and its followers," he said. "Something in line with what other great movements in Cybertronian history has been named."

Orion Pax had in fact been thinking about this for as long as he had taken seriously the idea that he might have some effect on the future history of Cybertron. The archives at Iacon were full of long-gone and forgotten movements that incorporated their beliefs in their names, one-word distillations of complex philosophies…

"Autobots," he said. "For we seek autonomy, and see it as our basic right."

"Interesting. I, too, had thought of a name." He looked as if he was about to say more, but Shockwave approached and said something quietly enough that Orion Pax could not hear it. "Ah," Megatron said. "Come with me, librarian. Something is about to happen that you will want to see."


End file.
